Andrey Santos has been sent to Strasbourg on loan for the season, returning to the place he had success in the latter half of last season.
The club just announced the deal with this video on their social media feeds:
https://twitter.com/RCSA/status/1819281988513419487
There had been some talk that the Brazilian midfielder would stay and fight for his place at Stamford Bridge, but it seems the squad planning has shaken out in a different way. With so much competition for minutes in the first team now, even before a likely departure for players like Cesare Casadei and Conor Gallagher, the right move was always going to be putting Santos somewhere that he was going to be valued and played every week.
While still a bit of a rough diamond, Santos has a lot of quality and a lot of personality. The fact that Strasbourg have done a whole campaign to celebrate his return shows what an impact he made in that initial 6 months. We hope he can go a step further now.
Poor planning from squad planners
This does leave us some questions, however. Principally – if this was the plan all along, why take Santos on the USA tour? Every place was precious, and plenty of good players with a chance of making the first team stayed at home because of that.
Not only that – Santos was given some of the precious minutes in the first two friendlies. There are a lot of others who are crying out for them.
Did the plan change at the last minute or was the plan just badly planned? Was this really about Enzo Maresca taking a look at him in person? Was it worth it, given this seemed to be the plan from long before the team even departed? We have our suspicions.
